Once Each Spring

The runner’s Boston will emerge again

Our June issue was at the printer on the day of the Boston Marathon. We pulled my editor’s note back to acknowledge the shocking events of that day and express our deep sorrow. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the victims of this brutal act and to their loved ones.

We also mourn the loss of innocence at the Boston Marathon. The bombing changes our memories and feeling about the race, this year and always.

I’m reminded of an essay I wrote for the back page of Runner’s World in 1996, commemorating the 100th running of Boston. In it, I wrote that in my mind Boston exists only on race day, “a runner's Brigadoon appearing out of the Massachusetts woods.” Having never lived there, my Boston is a magical place, unsullied by the mundane and the sorrows of real life. “It is always spring in my Boston,” I wrote, describing a place where no one has to go to work on Monday, instead the people come out to run or celebrate runners. In this Boston, “Boylston Street is a single-lane stadium lined with overflowing stands, a half-mile of agony and bliss. The very name evokes images of great battles and the sweet feelings of accomplishment. Copley Square is always slightly out of focus, viewed through the happy haze of honorable exhaustion.”

Now the name Boylston Street also evokes images of terror and the haze of smoke. This act didn’t just occur in Boston, it invaded the magical Boston of marathon day. It is a sad reminder that we can’t escape the real world.

One of the cruel twists of April 15, 2013, is that many of the victims of the Boston bombings were spectators and supporters of runners. Anyone who has run a marathon knows that these are among the world’s most unselfish people that day: wives and husbands, mothers and sons, sisters and friends who give up their weekend, fight crowds and endure weather to stand for hours to glimpse their loved one passing by, to cheer and help celebrate someone else’s accomplishment. I cannot imagine the emotions of fearing that someone who came to support me might have given their life. Faced with tragedy, I’m reminded that our time is limited, and we give our lives by how we spend the hours while our hearts still beat. I think about how my wife has supported me in dozens of marathons and races over the years. I’ve not appreciated her gift enough.

In light of the events of the day, we considered the rest of the issue. It all felt frivolous. What seemed important yesterday doesn’t seem worth the space or mental energy today.

But while tragedy is a good reminder of what truly matters, and we need to grieve and appreciate life, we have to get up tomorrow, too. When I do, I’ll likely do what I did the morning after my mother died last fall — I’ll go for a run. And while the run won’t take all the shock and sorrow away, it will give me the assurance that George Sheehan wrote about in Running and Being: “When I'm about overwhelmed by all this,” Sheehan wrote, “I take this loneliness out on the roads … to know that there is an answer even though I may never find it.”

My hope and confidence is that, next April, my familiar runner’s Boston will again emerge from the Massachusetts woods, wiser and more mature, but no less magical, as it has for the past 117 years, once each spring.